Pagina's

This weekend the big three in Dutch politics, Labour, Christian Democrats and the Liberal Conservative, along with the crypto-leninists of GroenLinks hold their party conferences in preparation for the November 22 elections.

The main themes that are emphasised in this election are of a rather detailed nature not really interesting to a foreign audience, but occasionally something fall through the cracks of what seems to be a tightly directed campaign to keep painful and potentially embarassing points off the public agenda.

We reported earlier about the infiltration of rightwing Turks to influence the Dutch political system from within. Since last week both PvdA (Labour) and CDA (Christian Democrats) ditched the candidates that featured prominently in the Trouw article first adressing this. PvdA chairman Michiel van Hulten spoke of a 'very tough decision'.

I really don't know what was so tough about it. All three ditched candidates denied there ever was an Armenian genocide, in direct contradiction to their respective parties POV. Additionally they co-ordinated attempts to subvert the political process to the advantage of Turkey, without any indication they cared about the country they would be sworn to serve as MPs. In my book that is treason, pure and simple. Both CDA and PvdA should not be fretting about whether to let these candidates go, they should be fretting about whether to withdraw the Dutch nationality and expel these people or put them before a firing squad at dawn after all. Hirsi Ali was thrown out of the Netherlands for much less, you may remember.

GroenLinks, who also had members implicated in the email-group affair was noticable by the deadly silence on the subject. On the contrary, Femke Halsema this weekend showed the Dutch public how she and her stalinist little friends really think about Dutch history. Jan-Peter Balkenende had said in a speech that he longed for the spirit the Dutch had during the days of the VOC and the Golden Century, when the Netherlands were one of the worlds foremost trading nations and the nation bubbled with energy and initiative. Femke responded in the only reasonable and logical way one could responds to such absurd statements: 'Balkenende longs for the days of the VOC, the plunder, the colonialism, the slave trade.'.

How right you are Femke! That is exactly what Balkenende wants. Because during that time we did not have the Dutch masters, or the spice trade. We did not know people like Huygens, van Leeuwenhoeck, Spinoza. Our national history is only one of plunder and slavery, untill we woke up and saw the light sometime during the sixties. Yes, what a profound and historically aware answer.

Obviously I will not be voting for Femke and her army of witless flower children who's idea of the best state is still informed by the thinking of Stalin and Dzhershinsky and all those other human monsters the truly left have elevated to demi-god status.

In the mean time all parties in the campaign avoid like the plague any mention of the word 'integration', telling us and themselves that voters are suffering 'integration-fatigue'. Be that as it may but this weekend also saw (yet again) and instance of ambulance personell rushing to the aid of a person unconscious being harassed and physically threatened by a non-descript crowd of 'men'. I am taking the liberty to assume we are not talking about Fins here. Be that as it may, it seems that such harassment of emergency services trying to aid those in need of it would be a major issue in any campaign. But hush, be silent, mustn't upset the balance, we are going for a positive campaign. Don't mention anything potentially unpleasant. Better keep talking about fiscalisation of pensions and mortgage interest deductability.